Page 10 - October 2025 - Truth & Tidings

he life of Jacob is a very interesting In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord
study. Jacob lived to be 147 years Jesus could have called for more than 12
Told. They were, for the most part, legions of angels to deliver Him from the
turbulent and tumultuous years. When hands of those who sought to take His life
introduced to Pharaoh, Jacob described (Mat 26:53), but He willingly allowed men
the years of his life as “few and evil” (Gen to take Him, and He gave Himself for you
47:9). He came into this world grasping and for me.
1
his brother’s heel (25:26) and was rightly Many suggestions have been put for-
named Jacob, a supplanter (27:36). ward as to the meaning of Jacob’s vision.
Jacob was anxious to get his father’s While we may not fully understand all
blessing but sought it through his own that it means, we can learn certain things
self-effort and fleshly means. He deceived that will give us an appreciation of God’s
his father with the skins of animals (27:11- divine purposes and of His care for His
23) and was later deceived by his own own. It tells us that heaven is interested in
children with the blood of an animal the affairs of earth and that the counsels
(37:31-35). of heaven are fulfilled on earth, while the
In Genesis 28:11-15, we read the account affairs of earth are known to heaven.
of Jacob’s vision of a ladder reaching up to It is a reminder, too, that nothing es-
heaven and the angels of God ascending capes the gaze of an all-seeing God. It
and descending on it. The Lord Jesus told also tells us that His eyes are ever upon
Nathanael that there would be a future His own. The writer of the epistle to the
time when he would see the angels of God Hebrews tells us angels are “ministering
ascending and descending upon the Son spirits, sent forth to minister for them who
of Man (Joh 1:51). Matthew records how shall be heirs of salvation” (Heb 1:14). The
that angels ministered to the Lord Jesus psalmist wrote, “The angel of the LORD
(Mat 4:11). encampeth round about them that fear
him, and delivereth them” (Psa 34:7).
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the KJV. As Jacob considered the ladder, “be-

298 TRUTH kTidings October 2025